Guangzhou

Guangzhou

At the Forefront of Union Reform?

Chapter:

(p.61)
3 Guangzhou

Source:

Insurgency Trap

Author(s):

Eli Friedman

Publisher:

Cornell University Press

DOI:10.7591/cornell/9780801452697.003.0003

This chapter asks the question: Can prolabor leadership at the municipal level advance the decommodification and incorporation of labor? Union practitioners (and some scholars) in China frequently suggest that leadership can make a very large difference in outcomes, since laws and regulations are often fuzzy and hence subject to interpretation in implementation. The chapter begins with an extended introduction to Chen Weiguang, chair of Guangzhou Federation of Trade Unions (GZFTU) and the man scholars and practitioners view as the most consistently prolabor union leader in China. His rise to power is in itself an indication of tentative first steps toward class compromise, as is the series of prolabor policies that were adopted under his guidance. However, an analysis of labor conditions in the enterprise with supposedly the best union in Guangzhou, Hitachi Elevator, shows that the limited levels of decommodification that have been secured came as a result of state action rather than from the union acting as worker representative.

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